Before Bishop Rudolph McKissick Sr. began bringing God’s word to congregants at one of the largest African-American churches in Florida, he used to bring them messages through another means.

“I was a letter carrier, and that was the ground that the Lord used to prepare me to be able to minister to people, to deal with people,” McKissick told me.

“I had a completely white route, and I would always whistle … I would whistle a great hymn. People felt comfortable talking to me, telling me their problems … ”

FROM MAILMAN TO PASTOR

But it wasn’t long before the trajectory of his life would take him off his mail route and onto a path that would put him at the helm of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church for nearly half a century.

McKissick became pastor of Bethel, which was founded in 1838, in 1966 when hundreds of congregants showed up to cast their vote for him. He recently retired as the longest serving pastor of that church, and more than a thousand congregants, as well as state and community leaders, showed up at the Prime Osborn Convention Center to pay tribute to him.

“It [his retirement gala] reminded me of 47 years ago when they voted for me … the spirit of the Lord told me they were coming for me,” said McKissick, who is 86.

“That’s what I saw the other night.”

McKissick also began his tenure at Bethel during a time of great social upheaval. In 1966, riots and racial violence wracked at least 43 cities, and two years after that, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot by an assassin in Memphis.

“I was a letter carrier, so I didn’t come into the church politically minded,” McKissick said. “But when I became associated with men like [the Rev. Charles B.] Daily and [the Rev. James Carl] Sams, I got involved at that point.”

In addition to serving on the boards of the Jacksonville Urban League and the National Council for Community and Justice, McKissick also welcomed various human rights leaders to Bethel, including South Africa Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

One major accomplishment, McKissick said, was ultimately leading Bethel through a transition so that it could reach people who believed that they wouldn’t fit in at the church, which claims a number of prominent black people as members, because of their income or social status.

“It was a silk stocking church,” McKissick said. “But it’s no longer a church for the who’s who, but a church for the whosoever will. Everybody is welcome.”

Part of his welcoming spirit also grew from the belief that he wasn’t being called to a job.

“I never thought in 47 years that I was going to work,” he said. “I always thought that I was on a mission.”

TENDING TO HIS FLOCK

No doubt, bringing comfort to people on a mail route by listening to their problems is an easier job than listening to the hundreds of congregants who expect him to perform that specific task.

That’s because a mail carrier will ultimately be evaluated on how efficiently he delivers the mail, not on how comforting or how effectively he delivers the word of God.

But judging by the more than 1,500 people who paid tribute to McKissick, he succeeded in making that transition. And the outpouring of appreciation will undoubtedly help him to ease his way into another transition: that of being the retired pastor of a prominent church.

But, he said, his congregants won’t miss seeing his face.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, with a laugh. “One of the biggest problems I’m having now is deciding where I’m going to sit.”